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Okay - I can see what you guys are talking about. To me, though, it looks more a couple sets of "grabber arms" from the inside of a Star Destroyer docking bay. That said, I do see why it could look like a propeller to someone else.

Robert Comsol wrote:

Thanks, it is circled in red.
The blades at 7, 8 and 9 o'clock are probably also there but at this viewing angle they would look extremely thin and therefore do not show up on the low-res picture.

Even though I can see why you would think it was a propeller, I remain unconvinced sir.

I'll dig up some more pictures later and see if we can shed any more light on it.

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q

IIRC, in the later seasons of DS9 where they were moving towards a purely CG fleet, I somehow remember rear views of the various Excelsior's being shown with no chasm at all - more like a massive door placed inside and behind the opening. You could still see the outline of the original opening, but it was totally blocked off with a massive "plate" that seemed a little off-color from the rest of the hull.

I suspect it was because the CG team building the meshes were also scratching their heads over the purpose of this area, and that it was far too complex a mesh to build for an area that would hardly ever be seen - a valid point now that they were showing starships maneuvering in battle like fighters instead of the massive capital ships that they actually were. I don't have the time at present to scour Trek Core for visual evidence of this, but I could swear that I saw Excelsior variants like this.

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I may appear unoccupied to you, but at the molecular level, I'm really quite busy.

Fascinating. I'll try to dig something up later on - I probably have images that might show this in my stockpile for the TM.

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q

Here's another look with detailing, even though the model itself is relatively crude overall. (This time note the yellow glow on saucer impulse engines on that Galaxy; also, two standards of Miranda there...)

Finally, there's the detailed death scene of the Valley Forge. Despite the lights being out (for obvious reasons!) there appears to be some sort of detail in there nevertheless. Also note the aft torpedo tubes, protruding more clearly than in the physical model(s).

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q

Well, impulse agility is something the Jem'Hadar smaller ships excelled in. It makes sense that Starfleet's most antiquated assets would need some beefing up in that department...

Having a rolling door cover a semicircular doorway is physically rather challenging, so that's probably not how Starfleet would close the hole if they wanted to. But the Excelsior was introduced in the same movie that introduced the enclosed Spacedock Earth, supporting the notion that Starfleet sees merit in enclosing vacuum inside walls. With the space station, it's for the purpose of having ships inside, somehow. I'm all for it being for the same purpose with the ship! The Lakota greeblie could well be a utility spacecraft that has two bulky and angular cargo sections - possibly a landing barge for assault purposes, perhaps a deep space self-repair auxiliary.

I guess so. But there's no forcefield glow across or around the Spacedock doors, and the glow within the Excelsior cavity is indeed within.

Really, with craft as big as those putatively docking inside the Excelsior rear entrance, atmosphere probably wouldn't be necessary or even desirable. The craft would have more versatile means of embarkation than the tiny shuttlecraft do, such as proper docking ports and transporters of their own; no need to provide for people who walk in through the side door.

Well, we could split the hair further. The glow in the Excelsior opening doesn't really seem to come from the opening, but rather from the back area, sort of behind the "gondola." It's possible it's not a forcefield at all.

On the tangent, though, Spacedock really doesn't make much sense to me without that capability. YMMV, of course.

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q

Well, why not? Starships have really funny shapes sometimes - why the curved pylons on the E-D when there could be simple straight slabs instead, say? Possibly exterior shape does matter (warp dynamics or some such nonsense), and one just must have that beautiful undercut in the secondary hull. So what's one to do when there's not enough stuff to fill the hull with? Create the undercut shape with hollow, walled space, I guess.

That was more or less what I originally theorized too, even when I thought it was a shuttlebay.

By the way, I think the AMT kit instruction sheet specifically calls the piece in there a shuttlebay, but I'll have to check. Not that it really means anything.

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q

It's not as if the idea of two dissimilar bays, one atop the other, would be particularly bad or even unprecedented. The "upgraded" Ambassadors have a clamshell-door bay at upper stern, but also another bay at lower stern - and upside-down Excelsior bay in fact. There might be merit to having a separate bay for the workbee trains or lighters that bring consumables aboard, so that the tactical or scientific errands of the shuttlecraft aren't inconvenienced or vice versa.

I'm truly starting to again see the lower bay as a prototypical precedent for the larger bay we seem to see on the Enterprise-C and certainly see on the D..

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"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." - Q